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I’ve never really seen it that way. Growing up, the word “faggot” was thrown around. The two words were thrown around, they were always thrown around. But growing up, when you said “faggot” to somebody it didn’t necessarily mean they were gay. It was in the sense of “You fuckin’ dick.”

But you don’t see these two words doing the same thing?

I guess it depends on if you’re using it in a derogatory way. Like, if you’re using the word “faggot” like I just said, in the way of calling them a name, that’s different than a racial slur to me. Some people may feel different. Some white kids feel comfortable throwing the word around all day. I don’t. I’m not saying I’ve never said the word in my entire life. But now, I just don’t say it in casual conversation. It doesn’t feel right to come out of my mouth.

Let’s talk about your process as a writer. How do you come up with hooks?

I think the beat should talk to you and tell you what the hook is. The hook for “Just Lose It” I probably wrote in about thirty seconds as soon as the beat came on. It was the last record we made for the album. We didn’t feel like we had the single yet. That was a song that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just what the beat was telling me to do. Beats run through my head—and rhymes and lyrics and wordplay and catchphrases. When you’re a rapper, rhymes are just gonna come at you. Those words are usually inside that beat, and you gotta find them.

Have you ever tried the Jay-Z method of not writing the rhymes out, just coming up with them in your head?

Yeah, I’ve done that. If you’ve ever seen my rhyme pads, my shit is all over the paper, because it’s a lot of random thoughts. But a lot of times I’ll be short a couple of bars, and I’ll have a couple of lines wrote down and then I just go in the booth and try shit, and see what I’ll say. I’ll lose my space on the paper and just start blurting out, and it’ll just come out. Music for me is an addiction. If I don’t make music I feel like shit. If I don’t spend enough time at home with my kids I feel like shit. Music is my outlet, my kids are my life, so there’s a balance in my life right now that couldn’t be better.

So you were a teenager when you first heard the Beastie Boys, and they allowed you to feel like, “Oh, I could be part of hip-hop.” 3rd Bass probably gave you more of that sense.

Yeah, but then along came the X-Clan. I loved the X-Clan’s first album [To the East, Blackwards, 1990]. Brother J was an MC that I was afraid of lyrically. His delivery was so confident. But he also made me feel like an outcast. Callin’ us polar bears. Even as militant as Public Enemy were, they never made me feel like, “You’re white, you cannot do this rap, this is our music.” The X-Clan kinda made you feel like that, talking [on Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?] about “How could polar bears swing on vines of the gorillas?” It was a slap in the face. It was like, you’re loving and supporting the music, you’re buying the artist and supporting the artist, you love it and live it and breathe it, then who’s to say that you can’t do it? If you’re good at it and you wanna do it, then why are you allowed to buy the records but not allowed to do the music? That was the pro-black era—and there was that sense of pride where it was like, if you weren’t black, you shouldn’t listen to hip-hop, you shouldn’t touch the mike. And we used to wear the black and green.

You wore an Africa medallion?

Me and a couple of my other white friends. And we would go to the mall.

Whoa.

I remember I had the Flavor Flav clock. The clock was so big and ridiculous, it was the perfect Flavor Flav clock. It was fuckin’ huge. And me and my boy are in matching Nike suits and our hair in high-top fades, and we went to the mall and got laughed at so bad. And kinda got rushed out the mall. I remember this dude jumpin’ in front of my boy’s face and bein’ like, “Yeah, boyyyeee! What you know about hip-hop, white boyyyeee!”

You must’ve had drama with the Africa medallion.